Well done, as television movies go. There seems to have been a substantial budget and an awful lot of research behind it. There are times when points and characters are overstated, but it's an improvement over "Judgment at Nuremberg." This film puts the Nazi leaders on trial and finds most of them guilty of crimes against humanity, while others are sentenced to prison. "Judgment at Nuremberg" put the entire nation of Germany on trial, handed the thankless task of defending Germany's role in World War II to Maximilion Schell, and found every German who ever breathed to be guilty of every sin that's ever been committed in the history of humankind. The scriptwriter, Abby Mann, accepted his Academy Award "in the name of all intellectuals everywhere." This modest production fills in many of the blanks that are missing from the public's understanding of the Nuremberg trials. Where, for instance, did the prisoners and staff of the trials find housing in Nuremberg, an ancient city that had been flattened by Allied bombing and in which there were still hundreds of decomposing bodies beneath the rubble? And did all the four major powers -- the US, Britain, France and Russia agree on the format and the procedures? Answer: No, the Russians and the French, who had suffered most under Nazissm, wanted summary executions of all the bigwigs. The subject is dead serious but the program has its quietly amusing moments -- the brash, ugly Russian representative trying to persuade the horrified French representative that he should lace his fine wine with a good belt of vodka. It has the limitations of most commercial productions. The Russian guy really IS ugly, and almost all the Germans are played by men with names like O'Keefe. There are many choker closeups, a technique that befits the small screen.
The Nazi leaders of course are villains of the worst sort but they're shown as humans too. After the surrender, an ebullient Goering, Brian Cox, unexpectedly drives up to an American Air Force base with his wife and child, dismounts from his chauffeur-driven car, and formally hands over his sword to an astounded General Spaatz -- "one airman to another." After being feted publicly, the victors soon round him up and place him in a cell, as had been done with the other prisoners. An American lieutenant, Tex Wheeler, is posted as Goering's personal guard. Scott Gibson gives a convincing performance. Wheelis will play a larger role in Goering's fate later.
Alex Baldwin is Robert H. Jackson, who more or less runs the show. His assistant Jill Hennessy is a fox and the rest of the cast is quite good. There are too many airy conversations about moral superiority and the viewer is urged to want Baldwin to treat Georing on the stand as the despicable, conniving swine he is. Should he? How does the word "disinterested" differ from "uninterested"? The most chilling testimony comes from the Commandant of Auschwitz, who describes the camp's activities precisely and dispassionately -- showing neither indignation or remorse.
Unfortunately, the prosecution insists on presenting not just documentary evidence but witnesses too, in order to deliberately heighten the drama behind the trial. It's pretty sickening, naturally, and to many adults it's repetitive. We know about the medical experiments in which Jews were kept in freezing water until they died. And so we sit through the familiar revolting images of the charred skeleton in the oven, the walking cadavers, the old man praying as he lies on a stretcher, the waxlike naked bodies piled on one another in mounds, the bulldozer shoveling them into the empty pit. I doubt that anyone needs to be REMINDED of what happened. But maybe it's just as well that we go through it all again because I'm not sure how much of this material has faded from our collective memory. One in six English youngsters thought Auschwitz was a World War II theme park, and one in six thought Hitler was a football coach.
And, at that, there are some insights into what has always been a blank at least in my mind. Goering was head of the Luftwaffe. So? What did he have to do with the treatment of the Jews and other devalued minorities? Simple. The experiments that froze subjects to death in ice water were undertaken at his request in order to discover how Luftwaffe crew might best survive if shot down in northern waters. Except for a few, the defendants all seem like unregenerate Nazis. Well, except for Rudolf Hess too, because he was nuts. It may seem like a mistake to have Julius Streicher portrayed as a rabid anti-Semite, pounding the table, ranting against Jews, his features in a cataleptic sneer. But that was the kind of guy he really was. He wasn't a military man but his railing against the Jews amounted to paranoia. He combed the pages of the Talmud and the Old Testament in search of passages that painted Judaism as harsh or cruel, rather like some of us are now doing with the Koran. It's easy.
Some of the prisoners, like Albert Speer, the architect who became Hitler's Armaments Minister, admit their guilt. Others rely on the rationale that they were only following orders. This excuse is always dismissed by civilized people but mistakenly in my opinion.
Not in this case, perhaps, but for "only following orders" substitute "doing what I was expected to do," and we're all guilty, even if the "orders" are sometimes unspoken, in which case they're known as "command pressure" or "peer pressure" or "keeping up with the Joneses." One doubtful ex-Nazi, Hans Frank, puts it this way: "I wanted to keep my job." Suppose, instead of "job", we substitute "public opinion" or "the respect of my community"? From a sociological point of view, the intricacies are myriad.
